Country Roads (35 page)

“Your fault?”

He turned one hand up to give hers a squeeze before he dropped his palms to his thighs. “I got a job offer in DC. He wanted to make sure I didn’t take it.”

“What was the job in DC?” Something Claire had said nagged at her. Something about Paul having a great idea people were interested in.

“Not worth talking about.” He uncrossed his legs and drew his feet in. “So that’s my story.”

“You did an incredible thing for your brother. And for Eric.”

He shook his head. “I’ve been lucky to be a part of Eric’s life. I forgot to say thank you for today. He couldn’t wait to show his father his portrait by the famous artist.”

She decided not to point out he’d been too angry to express his gratitude earlier. “I keep thinking that’s what you must have been like at age ten.” She raised her eyes to his, trying to communicate some of the emotion roiling around inside her.

“You don’t have to look at me like that,” he said, chucking her under the chin. “I’m not fishing for sympathy.”

Julia was still trying to fit all the things she knew about Paul into this new framework. “If your brother’s in AA, doesn’t he have a chance of getting better?”

He laced his fingers with hers. “You may believe that whisper horse of yours can be turned into a model citizen, but it’s my
experience that people don’t change in significant ways. I want Eric to have his father, so I have to be around to make sure Jimmy stays on the straight and narrow.”

“You’re a good brother.”

“You’re not the only person who’s said something like that to me today. But it doesn’t change anything.” He raised her hand to his mouth and kissed the back of it, his silver eyes going hot over their joined hands. “Let’s go back to my place and I’ll give you a tour.”

Pulling her up and against him, he ran his hands under her shirt and up her back, so she could feel his touch on her bare skin. He lowered his mouth slowly to hers as he opened the catch of her bra and slipped around to tease her nipples to hard peaks. Her body responded before her mind could catch up to the abrupt change of his mood.

He deepened the kiss, his tongue touching hers, and she arched into him, her hands twined into his hair as much to hold herself up as to feel its strong texture. She moaned when his hands skimmed down and around her rib cage to slip under her jeans and knead her buttocks with a powerful, erotic grip. His revelations were forgotten as heat went zinging down between her legs. “Oh God, yes! Lift me up!”

“Easy, sweetheart. We’ve got the rest of the day.”

“It’s not enough,” Julia said, using her grip on his hair to hold his mouth to hers. “Carlos comes tomorrow.”

He squeezed her butt one more time before he slid his hands upward to retrieve the two ends of her bra and deftly refasten it. “Carpe diem.”

“I know what that means, and it’s not legal Latin.”

She felt rejected.
Why didn’t he ask her to stay in Sanctuary?

J
ULIA TRIED TO
savor the swift rush of their ride back to town, but her body was jittery with arousal and her mind kept running through Paul’s story. The enormity of his sacrifice took her breath away. She understood he had powerful obligations in Sanctuary, so he couldn’t think only of himself when it came to the future. He couldn’t leave, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t stay. Yet he seemed to be pulling away from her, not trying to keep her here. Was he too proud to ask her to remain? Did she need to make the offer first?

She was out of her depth here.

“You can unlatch your arms now,” Paul said over his shoulder, as they turned and rumbled into a driveway. “I think you may have cracked a few ribs in the last couple of miles.”

Julia yanked her arms away, noticing her muscles were shaking with fatigue. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize I was squeezing so tight.”

“I slowed down in case I was making you nervous, but it didn’t seem to loosen you up.” He held the bike as she clambered down. “Is everything all right?”

Was that her opening? Should she say something now
? She glanced around the quiet neighborhood where dusk was just drifting in and golden light bloomed in house windows. No, this conversation needed to be more private.

Something caught her attention and she focused on the house they stood in front of. It was Victorian but had a distinctive shape and design. “Is this an old train station?” she asked, noting the simple but elegant crisscrossed gingerbread decoration under the peak of the entrance gable.

He nodded, his eyes on his home. “I rented it originally and then it grew on me. It used to be right in town, but they moved it when the train stopped running. You can still see the ticket window inside.” He walked to the attached garage and keyed in a code, making the door rise so he could wheel the big bike in.

She followed him, skimming her palm along the sleek lines of the black Corvette crouching in the dim light, as the garage door clanked down again. The car looked sexy, ominous, and fast, reminding her of her first sight of it on the gravel shoulder of the interstate. When she stopped to admire the long, elegant hood, Paul came up behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist. His voice rumbled past her ear. “I’m picturing how your bare skin would look against the shiny black paint.”

She sucked in a gasp as she wondered what it would feel like to lie naked on the hood of the car with Paul’s silver eyes locked on her. “Wouldn’t it dent the car?”

He made a strangled sound. “That would be one repair I wouldn’t mind paying for.”

She turned in his arms and pulled his head down. He came willingly, locking his mouth on hers. Her body caught fire and she opened her legs so his thigh pushed between them, the friction making her throw her head back and moan. “Oh dear God, yes!”

“Ah, Julia,” he breathed against her throat as he dragged his lips down the skin bared by the neckline of her shirt. She worked her hands up between them and ripped the shirt off over her head. He understood the invitation and ran his tongue along
the lace edge of her bra before he closed his mouth on the hard, sensitive nipple.

She rocked her pelvis against his thigh as she nearly came just from the heat and moisture of his mouth soaking through the fabric. “Oh please, take it off,” she begged, wanting his lips against her skin.

He released her to unhook the bra. Yanking the straps down her arms to drop onto the cement floor, he lifted her breasts with his hands, bending to suck at them, first one and then the other. She threaded her fingers into his thick hair and held on as wave after wave of sensation rolled from her breasts downward to pool deep between her legs. As she felt the pressure building inside her, she drew his head upward. “I’m ready. Now.”

His eyes blazed. “All right. Let’s go inside.”

“No. Here. On the car.”

She unzipped her jeans and yanked them and her panties down to her ankles while she toed off her loafers. As his gaze was drawn to her body, she retreated until the backs of her knees hit the ’Vette’s bumper, and she thudded down less than gracefully on the hood. She got one heel onto the bumper and scooted herself up enough to recline on her elbows.

Paul stood like a statue, his gaze devouring her as she lowered herself onto the curving metal, her eyes never leaving his face. The car’s surface was unyielding but smooth, the feel of it on her bare skin erotic and charged.

“Do you know what you look like?” His voice had dropped an octave and taken on the rasp of sandpaper.

She shook her head, kept speechless by the scorch of his attention.

“Every man’s fantasy.” He stood several moments longer, his eyes tracing a path she could nearly feel over her body. Then he was between her legs, spreading them as he braced a knee on the
bumper and lowered his head to kiss her inner thigh. “I want to feast on you.”

He blew a waft of breath against her that brought her arching up to his mouth. For a moment she felt the graze of his lips before he skimmed his hands down behind her knees and pulled them upward, bracing his shoulders between them. Now she was spread open to his eyes and his mouth. Her eyelids fluttered closed and she splayed her hands over the satiny metal as he drove her into a delirium of sensation with his lips, tongue, and an occasional graze of his teeth.

Her mind filled with flares of pleasure and escalating need until she heard herself begging him to let her finish. He slid one finger inside her as he flicked his thumb in exactly the right place. Her orgasm exploded, sending her internal muscles into a clench so hard she screamed and bowed up off the car, carrying his weight upward with her. He flicked his thumb again and sent another contraction ripping through her. After that, she lost track of how many waves broke over her until she sprawled limply across the hood, tiny rills of pleasure eddying through her wherever Paul feathered his fingers along her bare skin.

She summoned enough strength to force her eyes open. He bent over her, one hand braced on the hood beside her hip, while he ran the other one over her body, his gaze following its progress. When his touch moved up to her cheek, she saw the arousal still white-hot in his eyes. “Paul.” It came out as a croak, so she cleared her throat and tried again. “It’s your turn.”

He shook his head. “You just gave me something I’ll never forget. I don’t need anything else.”

She got herself up onto her elbows. “Are you trying to tell me that bulge in your jeans is your wallet?”

He gave her hair a tug. “You can barely move. I’ll carry you into the house.”

He took one of her hands and started to pull her upright, but she resisted, putting her free hand on his chest to keep him from scooping her up. “Don’t you want to have me on the Corvette?” She dropped her voice to a husky purr.

“Sweetheart, I want to have you everywhere I see you. Now let’s get you up to my bed where we can be comfortable.”

For a moment, Julia forgot the seductress act as the compliment sent a different kind of pleasure singing through her. “I don’t want to be comfortable. I want you to come inside me on the hood of your car. Hard.”

She snapped open his belt buckle, then tore the button of his jeans from its hole and yanked the zipper down. He caught her hands in one of his and pushed her chin up with the other. The cords of muscle in his neck were taut, but his touch was gentle. “Are you sure you’re ready, sweetheart?”

In answer, she pulled her hands from his grasp and freed his cock from his briefs, giving it a hard stroke between her palms.

His breath hissed in as his hips jerked forward, and she knew she had him. “Give me the condom,” she said.

The foil envelope appeared in his hand as if by magic. As she opened it, he whipped his shirt up over his head, revealing the stretch of smooth olive skin over the defined geometry of muscle. She rolled the condom down his erection and reached toward the undulation of his bared abdomen.

“No.” His voice grated harshly. “If you touch me again, I won’t last. Lie back.”

She lowered herself onto the metal, squirming slightly as her heated skin touched its cool surface.

He slid his hands under her bottom, easing her closer to him. Then he stepped between her thighs, the denim of his jeans brushing her inner thighs. She gasped as the touch sent her nerve endings pirouetting along the edge between pleasure and overload.

He locked his thumbs around her hips, lifting her, and then in one stroke he was inside her. She felt the scuff of his jeans on her skin, the curl of his fingers into her behind, and the pressure of his cock pushing deep within her. “Oh yes,” she said. “Oh yes.”

He pulled back and thrust into her again, his breathing harsh, his grip turning to iron. “Sweetheart, I can’t hold on any longer.”

“Don’t hold on.” She pulsed her hips against him. “Let go. Take me with you.”

The sound that came from him was primal. He yanked her right to the edge of the hood, lifting her hips so he could drive even more deeply into her. As his rhythm quickened, her body shifted from satiety to wanting again. She could feel the fist of arousal squeezing tighter and tighter inside her, until he ground his hips against her and she convulsed around him, screaming his name.